


A Heart Closing

by berhanes (sqvalors)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Alternate Universe - World War II, Angst, Community: rs_games, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Long Distance Pining, M/M, Manipulative Dumbledore, Marauders' Era, R/S Games 2016, Sexual Content, Spies & Secret Agents, Top Remus Lupin, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-08-24 03:29:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8355283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sqvalors/pseuds/berhanes
Summary: Sirius stares at him across the table for a long moment and Remus waits. It's all he ever seems to be doing lately. Here are the same circles they've been turning for god knows how long, the same paths treaded flat, the same anger simmering under Remus' skin. They keep coming back to this, hitting each other at odd angles.(A war story, in stops and starts.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Initially written for the 2016 R/S games, but tweaked a little since then.  
>  **Prompt:** #64 - "Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over." - Octavia Butler

**March, 1938 - end of sixth year**

It begins over breakfast and the newspaper. James spreads the _Prophet_ out on their end of the Gryffindor table with a flourish, earning a scowl from both the third year he almost elbows in the ear and Remus, who has to swipe the toast rack and his mug of tea out of the way lest they fall victim to this new enthusiasm for printed journalism.

"I told you they'd have to run a story on it soon." James braces his palms either side of the article he means, triumphant. "It's rather short, but it's there."

"I don't see why they've bothered," says Sirius, from around a mouthful of scrambled eggs. He looks unimpressed and continues spooning the fourth heap of sugar into his tea. "Looks to be near the back, they can't see it as that important. Pass me that plate of sausages, would you?"

"My uncle says it's been in Muggle papers for months."

"Course it has Pete, it's a Muggle problem," James says, without looking up. Opposite him Peter looks vaguely chastised, and shrugs down into his seat.

"Muggle problems and our problems aren't mutually exclusive." Remus puts a certain stress on our, and spreads the jam on his toast in even swipes, glancing up once to see how his contribution is received. James and Sirius have a tendency to view Muggle events like a spectacle, something that doesn't come close to destabilising their own lives. Back in the dormitory James has a stockpile of Muggle papers from London (forwarded by the Potters' house elf) and from Devon (forwarded by James' eccentric aunt) and his fascination with the slow implosion of international politics over the last year has made Remus wary. The fact that neither James nor Sirius has paid much attention to the political tectonics on the continent before now, despite the occasional snippet in more widely circulating wizarding papers, makes him more so.

" _Obviously,_ Moony." James concedes with a twist of his mouth, flaps one hand in Remus' direction. "You know that's not what I meant. I just think it's awfully interesting to see when they start to overlap."

It's only a matter of time until they drag the ministry into their mess, I suppose." Sirius, stirring his tea with the end of his wand, sighs with a little more gusto than necessary. Remus isn't surprised that Sirius' only contribution to the conversation thus far is snide; his political stance on most things is reactionary at best, especially when Muggles are involved.

"Spoken like a true Pureblood elitist, Mr Black." Remus arches one brow. "We haven't quite trained it out of you then."

Sirius pulls a face and shrugs one shoulder, the irritation sparking in his jaw hidden by a quick grin and an almost characteristically suave wink. Movement a little too fast, a little too jagged. Settles so quickly it's near unnoticeable.

"I'm sure you'll find ways to perfect your method." The grin slips into a smirk as he drops his eyes discreetly to Remus' mouth and lets them linger in a way he's been daring to do more often lately. Remus sighs and goes to kick him under the table only to have his foot caught tight between Sirius' ankles. Sirius takes a long sip from his tea.

 - 

**May, 1939**

Things come to a head the following spring. There have been moments – fleeting glances, retorts snapped a little too quickly - when it's seemed that the inevitable fallout amongst the four of them is almost imminent. There's something about being old enough to recognise the creeping threat of war but simultaneously young enough to feel helpless about it that pulls the threads of friendship nearly to breaking point. In the end it's a scene that explodes in the common room that acts as the catalyst.

"I don't understand the theory behind it." Sirius is hunched in his chair, determined to ruin a childhood of etiquette lessons meant to perfect posture, his quill tapping incessantly against the paper.

Remus sighs. "McGonagall went over it last week," he says, shuffling through his own notes, "I have the diagrams somewhere."

James glances across the table with a look of equal exasperation. There are dark circles pressed under his eyes that stem from more than exam stress, Remus suspects, although he won't bring it up and James won't either. Like most things happening lately, Remus has put it out of mind as best he can. The dormitory has been buzzing gently with silencing charms for weeks and something about the way Sirius has begun to pull away from him makes him uneasy.

Sirius huffs loudly and dramatically. "I keep looking at my own bloody diagrams, I don't understand it."

"Maybe you should switch subjects for the rest of the afternoon, revise something else." Peter suggests it tentatively, all too aware of saying the wrong thing around Sirius when he's like this.

"Pete's right, Pads. The potions practical is early on as well, maybe you've just been looking at transfig for too long." James sits back and rakes a hand through his hair. "Merlin knows I have."

Remus notes the way Sirius holds tension in his body, everything tightly coiled, and wonders if Sirius is aware of it. He knocks their knees together under the table, gently, and tries not to think that perhaps if it were just the two of them he'd be able to wind their fingers tight and press close until Sirius moved a little easier. He wishes he could clap Sirius on the shoulder in the way James does without it feeling like too much and too obvious, as if people will see that brief contact and know, somehow. He puts his quill down.

"I think you're overthinking it."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Sirius snaps, glowering sidelong.

"Just that you're, I don't know, trying to find something in the steps that isn't there. McGonnagall isn't trying to trip us up." Remus rests his elbows on his part of the table and shrugs.

"It's all a waste of time, anyway." The words are bitter, brittle, spat out as Sirius glowers at his parchment and then up at the rest of them. "The Muggles seem intent on taking us all down with them at this rate."

There's a tang of _toujours pur_ about that, but Remus thinks better of saying so. He rolls his eyes instead. "Please, onwards with your next dose of fatalism. It's only been a few hours since the last one."

"He is right though, isn't he," says Peter, and Remus grits his teeth. "What good are our NEWT grades going to be if the country is invaded?"

"Shut up Pete." James shoves him sharply with an elbow, and glances around the room. "There are some first years over there. Keep your voices down." He lets his glare linger on Sirius, too.

"An O in an exam isn't going to mean anything if we're all dead by this time next year."

"Christ, Pads."

"It's true." Sirius stares at the three them as if they're all blind to the facts and Remus wants very much to be somewhere else. "Everyone's thinking it. I'm sick of waiting for the Muggles to decide to stop doing nothing."

"I thought you thought it wasn't our problem." Remus raises his eyebrows. Sirius looks scornful.

"There's a wizarding war effort, you know."

Remus knows. His father had heard whispers of it through hiis department - nothing official, nothing concrete, but tendrils of information always filter down. Of course it would be naive to assume the Ministry would stay out of such a global affair, but Remus hadn't thought that it would make even the slightest impression on the school. He frowns. From the other side of the table, James is glaring daggers that Sirius doesn't seem to see.

"Sounds _exciting._ " Sirius pushes his chair back precariously onto two legs and doesn't look at any of them for longer than a moment.

"Are you fucking stupid?" Remus says quietly, drawing himself up in his seat. "Exciting? Sirius, have you read the news lately?" Sirius has read the news, and Remus knows this because it's some of the only post he seems to get these days, so this devil may care attitude is only the tip of whatever Sirius is thinking.

"Obviously, or I wouldn't have put myself forward for the Ministry's department, would I?"

"Muggle regiments too boring for you were they."

"I thought you might understand how dire the situation is, seeing as how you like to remind us of your dual heritage so often." Sirius slams his quill down. Remus can't find the words to articulate the fast growing fear in the well of his stomach.

"Sirius, come on." James looks tired of the whole situation. His attempt at mediation seems to be the final straw, because Sirius scrapes his chair across the floor and storms from the common room without another word, full of a cold fury Remus has only ever seen in paler shades.

When he's gone, Remus turns to the others. "Can you believe this?"

"Maybe he just needs to think things through by himself, there's no point pushing the matter." James gesticulates with his glasses, elbows propped on an open textbook. He doesn't quite look him in the eye.

"He's going to get himself killed," Remus snaps. He heads for the tower steps, leaving the table heaped with Defence revision.

"This is madness," he says, when he gets to the dormitory. Sirius barks out a laugh from where he's stood across the room, sharp sound and sharper teeth. Remus goes cold. "You can't be serious."

Sirius leans back against the windowsill, shirtsleeves pushed up to his elbows. He shrugs a little too nonchalantly for Remus' liking and says, "I don't see what your problem is. All the Muggles are willing to sign their lives away like it's sport. They've done it before."

"Do you hear yourself?" Remus wants to laugh at how absurd this entire situation is. It's so typically Sirius in all the worst ways that he can't even bring himself to be surprised.

"Here's something, do you think I'd be buried in the family plot if I died or does being disowned rule that out?" Sirius goes on as if Remus hasn't spoken, tilts his head and frowns like the question deserves real contemplation. There's a quickness to Sirius when he's like this, a jarring exaggeration of his movements and expressions that makes Remus nervous.

"You could find out soon enough by joining an ordinary regiment and getting blown to pieces somewhere in Africa but then I don't suppose that has the level of _flair_ you're after, does it."

"I wouldn't be able to stand it, pretending I was a Muggle."

"People are dying, Sirius," Remus says, and there's a grim satisfaction in the way Sirius glowers.

"I'm not a fucking idiot." Sirius sharpens each word to a point, and there he goes again, looking at Remus like he's said the most ridiculous thing in the world. "Don't you think I know that? But I have to do something."

"Why?"

Sirius doesn't answer, lips pressed stubbornly together; there's an old fear flickering on his edges and Remus suddenly sees the logic that got them here, if it can even be called that. It's a strange thing, seeing someone you love pick themselves apart so thoroughly; he wonders how many times Sirius will need to dismantle himself in an attempt to find something worth salvaging amongst the bones of who he should have been.

"You're going to throw yourself into a war to prove a point to your mother? I suppose that makes it all right then, doesn't it. Really puts my mind at ease." Remus bunches the hem of his jumper tight between his fingers to keep himself from grabbing Sirius by his shirt and shaking him until he understands how much this feels like a knife to the gut.

Sirius glares, first at Remus and then at the floor. Bounces his knee once, twice, then pushes off the wall and strides across the dormitory towards his bed. With his back to Remus, he shoves up the lid of his trunk and then, when he's found what he's looking for, sits back on his haunches and holds a stiff envelope up over his shoulder. The Black family seal is recognisable even with the red wax cracked.

"What's that?" Remus asks even though he knows, because it seems like the sort of thing Sirius wants him to say.

"Heartfelt words from my beloved mother." Sirius doesn't move. "Mostly she just states, in a variety of florid ways, that she'd rather I were dead than continuing to humiliate her so prolifically."

"She doesn't mean that."

"Oh, she absolutely does." Sirius scowls in Remus' direction. "So I can only imagine how conflicted she'll feel if I die bloody in a war she thinks is beneath us."

Sirius holds the letter up between his thumb and forefinger like an offering and Remus wonders if he's expected to read it or if Sirius has just forgotten he's there. If things were different, if this were a different letter at a different time, it would have already made the rounds of the dorm, the boys taking turns to read choice lines in increasingly ridiculous falsettos until Sirius' laughter lost its strain. Here there's just Remus tangling his fingers in his jumper and waiting.

"I don't need you to be angry with me."

"What would you prefer."

"Don't sneer like that, it's not becoming." Sirius stands and shoves his hands into his pockets, dropping the letter. "Anyone would think I was making you tag along."

"This is mad, the way you're thinking. Why does everything have to be all or fucking nothing with you." Remus stares. He seems to be doing a lot of that lately - incredulous, horrified, waiting for the picture to change when he blinks. Sirius will do what he's always done, which is to say he'll do what he wants and justify it to himself however he needs to and the rest of them will pick up the pieces of what's left. Remus is all too used to watching him navigate the world unaware of his own edges: Sirius walking a wire with no safety net, Sirius daring himself to fall, eighteen and bursting with a wildness he's trying desperately to carve into something purposeful. It always ends messily, and Sirius always ends up hurting. Remus doesn't say any of this. The way Sirius watches him like they're circling each other before a fight makes him think that perhaps he doesn't need to.

"I don't expect you to understand."

"Understand what, Sirius? The fact that you're willing to get yourself killed?" Remus' throat is tight. "Have you spoken to James about this stupidity? I'd like to know what he thinks about it, or is this a plan you've cooked up together?"

"Dumbledore spoke to both of us." Sirius' gaze flickers away, the vaguest hint of guilt. "And anyway, politics has a lower death rate than you seem to give it credit for."

"Dumbledore suggested this to you?" Something about that makes Remus' skin crawl.

"Don't look so surprised."

"Who else has he spoken to?"

"I don't know if it rightly concerns you, seeing as Dumbledore clearly didn't think you were worth including." That stings, lodges between Remus' ribs like a knife point, but then Sirius has always known how to aim.

"That's a line your mother would have been proud of," Remus says, because he wants to see Sirius angry instead of petulant. "It's like being disowned did nothing for you."

"Don't."

Suddenly Sirius is too close. He bunches Remus' shirt in his fists and Remus has to brace himself on Sirius' forearms to maintain any distance between them as he's crowded back against the dormitory wall, shoulders hitting the wood panelling hard. The last time they stood like this Sirius was kissing him and Remus was trying to remember how his body worked. They haven't fought for months, not with this level of vitriol sparking between them; it used to be that Remus' height worked in his favour but there's a strength in Sirius now that surprises him enough to make him stumble. Remus shifts his grip to Sirius' shoulders, winces as Sirius' knuckles dig into his clavicle. The fraught anxiety in his stomach wants him to plead, beg Sirius not to agree to the arrangement Remus knows he's already agreed to, but there'd be little sense in it.

"Is this the attitude you'll take into whatever war room Dumbledore drops you in?"

" _Shut up_."

"You'd be a fucking liability like this," Remus spits, and then shoves Sirius back far enough to catch his breath. He doesn't look at the finger marks blooming accusingly on Sirius' skin. The letter from Sirius' mother is lying half under his bed and Remus would tear it into pieces too small to save if he thought it would do any good. Sirius has always been particular about his letters, filing even the vilest away in a box at the bottom of his trunk like a reminder of everything he hates.

For a while neither of them speaks. Sirius pushes his hair back out of his face and turns on his heel, heading back towards the window. Remus stares at the back of his head and wonders how they came to this. Instead of worrying about his NEWT exams he's worrying about Sirius, ready to sign himself away to the Ministry to aid a Muggle war he saw as nothing but a distant sport until a year ago. There's a creeping fear that Sirius still sees it as such, that the risks aren't screaming at him the way they're been screaming in Remus' head all afternoon, but Remus sometimes thinks it's Sirius' utter lack of trepidation that'll keep him alive. He tells himself it's better than Sirius carrying fear like a rock until he sinks.

"I shouldn't have told you," Sirius says, without turning to face him.

"For legal reasons or because you don't like my reaction?"

Sirius huffs through his nose and says nothing. His arms are folded across his chest, fingers digging into the flesh in near imitations of the marks left from five minutes ago. Remus thinks of something to say that won't make this worse and comes up with very little. At breakfast that morning he'd watched James and Sirius talking quietly, conspiratorial as always, and thought nothing of it. James and Sirius, Sirius and James, two sides of the same coin in a way Remus will probably never be able to fathom, now about to walk into something avoidable. He wants to throw up. Everything feels like a weight pressing heavy on his shoulders, pushing him down, down, until he collapses beneath it.

"Aren't you scared?" Remus says at last. He wants the answer to be yes. The answer should be yes, but then Sirius has always been good at defying expectations. Remus wants desperately to pull him in and hold him to his chest like a secret, weigh him down in this room until the war is over.

Sirius turns his head, a severe profile backlit by the afternoon sun. His eyes are closed, brow furrowed, and he looks suddenly weary. There's a lump forming in Remus' throat that he can't swallow. He sags back against the wall, doesn't bother to smooth out his wrinkled shirt. Sirius doesn't say a word.

-

They don't discuss it again for weeks, in that they hardly discuss anything for weeks. Remus learnt a long time ago that the first rule of self-preservation was to pull up the drawbridge on anything that threatened to knock you off balance and keep it shut,for as long as it took to ground yourself again. He blocks out his weekends and evenings into library study sessions, burying himself in potions books and avoiding any chance of confrontation, because confronting Sirius on this means confronting the mass of other problems quickly becoming apparent.

The first Friday after their exams is a few days before the Full and Remus is sitting out on the ramparts of the astronomy tower having a clandestine smoke, skin too tight for his bones, when Sirius treads quietly up behind him and drops down onto the ground at his side. Remus glances sidelong at him and sighs through his nose. Sirius is a picture of nonchalance but for his bottom lip, chewed pink. He's holding the invisibility cloak in a tightly coiled bundle.

"James said you'd be up here," he says, after a moment. "It's a wonder you managed it without the cloak, I was surprised it was still in the dormitory."

"Some of us are well versed in good old-fashioned sneaking," Remus says dryly.

"Can I talk to you?"

"I don't know what there is to talk about," Remus says. "I'm tired, Sirius. I just wanted to sit for a while."

"I don't want you to think I've not thought things through." Sirius isn't quite looking him in the eye, gaze darting nervously a little. Remus regards him carefully.

"You mean about running around behind enemy lines, dabbling in politics? Why on earth would I think you'd not thought that through."

"It wouldn't be like that."

"Then tell me."

Sirius stares at his hands, fingers knotted. His shirtsleeves are pushed up roughly over his elbows, top two buttons loose at the collar, and his hair is just long enough to curl out over the top of his ears and fall into his eyes. Remus imagines the fit Sirius' mother would have if she saw the unkempt way her eldest presented himself these days, and then he relents enough to offer the barely started cigarette across. Sirius hesitates a little before accepting it.

"It would be just like what the Muggle politicians are doing, only with high up pureblood lines, that's all, like a diplomat. Like reconnaissance." There are shadows in his cheeks as he takes a drag on the cigarette, and then he hunches his knees to prop his elbows up. "It's not like I'd be on the front line, it wouldn't be dangerous."

Liar, Remus thinks. Then: "What's it for?"

"Dumbledore hears things through the Ministry. There are powerful old families on both sides, all willing to do things under the table." Sirius shrugs lopsidedly and passes the cigarette back. Remus doesn't point out that this isn't really an answer. Their knees are touching, just barely; he thinks of Sirius mingling with the sort of people he ran from two years earlier, and he pretends it doesn't make him feel hollow. Sirius is giving him a look that says _tell me to stop so i can tell you i won't_ and Remus has to hold the smoke in his mouth to stop himself opening it to say something he'll regret. There's no way Sirius doesn't see that he knows there are pieces missing to this story.

"I don't suppose I can talk you out of it."

"Moony, you know I," Sirius is staring at him, Remus can feel it, "I don't know what else I would do that would feel as, I don't know, worthy."

"You've always been so bloody righteous."

"Would you hate me," Sirius asks. He sounds too earnest, too much like the child Remus met seven years ago, always soft and uncertain beneath the bravado.

"Would there be any point." Remus turns to look him in the eye, finally. He holds the cigarette between his first and second finger, the sharp bone of his wrist balanced on his knee, every feeling he has about this whole thing wrapped in those five words and the stretched silence that hangs between them afterwards. Sirius smiles, a small thing pulling at the corner of his mouth half-heartedly.

"I'll have all kinds of continental gossip for you."

Liar. Remus finishes the cigarette, stubbing it on the tower wall and letting it go over the edge. Liar, liar, liar. "Do you think it'll help, with the war effort I mean?"

"Perhaps. It's hard to tell before we get started."

"Seems like a lot of trouble for a perhaps."

"Remus, please." Sirius has pressed closer on his left, that wide-eyed soft look on his face again, and Remus realises with a clarity so sudden it freezes him that this is a goodbye; Sirius has sought him out as if he's someone able to grant absolution, as if this is enough to make amends. Remus' hands feel empty without a cigarette to hold. When he wakes tomorrow Sirius will not be there, he knows that with an almost painful clarity. Given the nature of things this is probably for the best – what future do they have, what future do they possibly have that doesn't involve a thin layer of deceit to it? Already Remus wants to undo the threads of whatever it is this is, dig Sirius out of himself to ease the ache behind his ribs.

"What do you want me to say.”

"I don't know."

"I'm scared," he says it plainly, exhausted by the charade of pretending otherwise. Sirius' shoulder is warm against his own. "I'm scared, Sirius. I can't sit here and listen to you try and justify whatever you're planning to do." Remus wants to be anywhere else, or rather he wishes everything happening around them was happening somewhere else and he could take all the time in the world to string the words he needs together. It feels impossible to explain, the way he'd prefer to set this whole thing on fire himself instead of waiting for it to unravel slowly and pull him apart with it; a loss of his own making would heal quicker, would hurt less than waiting.

Sirius reaches for his hand and suddenly Remus can't stand it, the closeness, the stifling sense of an ending that makes him feel like his skull is about to explode. He gets to his feet hurriedly and turns to head back inside, unsure of what to do with himself except get as far away as possible. He gets four steps into the tower and then Sirius catches up with him, _where are you going_ , long fingers wrapping tight around his wrist, and Remus is reeled back in like he always, always is.

"I need you with me for this, I need you on my side," Sirius is saying, voice thin. Remus wants to tell him that he's always been on his side, that he will probably be on his side until the day he dies at this rate, but the words stick in his throat like glass. Nothing he can say will change how this is going to unfold, he can feel that as sure as he can feel the hum of magic running through his veins. Sirius doesn't let go of his wrist.

-

**1941**

Sirius spends his inheritance from his uncle on the bottom half of a tall terrace in Kentish Town to be near the Ministry, although by the end of the summer of '41 he's barely there at all. Remus only knows this because his own home, two musty rooms above a grocers on Camden High Street, becomes the next port of call for mutual acquaintances in search of him.

Marlene McKinnon floos through to the crooked fireplace in Remus' bedroom on a humid Sunday morning in mid July and finds him leaning out of the window, half dressed and tapping ash from a slim cigarette onto the awning below. He glances over his shoulder at the telltale _whoosh_ and sighs.

"I don't know where he is," he says, before she can say a word. He takes one final drag on his cigarette before stubbing it out on the windowsill and pulling himself back into the room, resting his hip against the frame. "I've been getting his post for a week now, so I assume he's warded the house to redirect owls here again."

"That sounds very secure."

"I have suggested other methods." Remus taps a rhythm on the windowsill. He watches Marlene's face settle into a well-worn scowl.

"I was hoping he'd be back in the city and just holed up here," she says. "Dumbledore is anxious to have him rendezvous with the Minister."

"I'll let him know, if I see him this side of Christmas."

Marlene frowns at him, her irritation ebbing into something that makes Remus feel uncomfortably scrutinised, hyper-aware of his open collar and dangling braces. He shifts his weight off the windowsill and pads barefoot across the floorboards towards his bed, gesturing to the solitary wooden chair in his room as he does so. Marlene ignores him. He sits anyway, determined to look as unperturbed as possible until she leaves.

"What are you doing with yourself these days, Lupin?" She asks, casting a disdainful eye around his room. Her hair curls roundly on her shoulders in a way entirely too soft for her character. We are all of us playing a role, Remus thinks, we are all of us trying to fit into something not quite right. He can't tell from the way she asks if she's prying into whether he's working for the Ministry in a capacity she's unaware of or if she thinks he's gone native, after living in a Muggle district for so long. It's hard to decide if this is Marlene The Friend or Marlene The Auror. There's a destabilising amount of overlap these days.

"I drive. The emergency fire engines mostly."

"I should've guessed you'd be in the business of helping people." It sounds vaguely contemptuous, but then it's been a long couple of years and he's not sure he blames her. "I'm surprised you're still smoking, what with the shit your lungs must have seen lately."

"I'm sure I'll live." Remus thinks of the papers Dumbledore had arranged for him, exempting him from military service on the grounds of a 'weakened constitution', which is by far the most ludicrous metaphor for lycanthropy he's encountered in his entire life. He knows the favour was only extended because his formal inclusion within the Ministry's war division would have caused more trouble than it would've saved, and because Dumbledore wants him on hand for his informal inclusion regardless, a handy conduit between the home front and whatever it is the old man is orchestrating abroad. He's a loose end, useful but expendable, and well aware that the information he hears is neither complete nor always true.

"And you've had no word from Black?" Marlene is studying the floral wallpaper and the corner of it that curls just below the picture rail. She doesn't look overly keen.

"No."

"I see." She gives him a curious look, one that says she doesn't quite believe him, and then digs out a small purse of floo powder from her handbag. "I'll let you get back to your day. Do let me know if he contacts you within the next week."

"I'm sure he'll probably let you know he's back in the country before me." Remus shrugs, and Marlene purses her lips as if she had been about to say something and thought better of it. She ducks back into the fireplace and is gone in a flash of green, leaving Remus to light another cigarette and wait for his night shift to start. He watches smoke curl in front of his face and wonders what it means that Sirius hasn't checked in, if it means anything at all, and if Marlene is even telling the truth, and then he wonders if Sirius is ever coming home.

-

He has nightmares: Sirius bleeding out somewhere, Sirius screaming, Sirius dead and dying over and over. His mind places Sirius out of time, sprawling broken in a trench or speared with bayonets, because when Remus thinks _war_ he thinks of the tension Lyall Lupin came back with, hollow eyes and hands that shook. Even years after the Great War, in Remus' earliest memory - aged four and stretched out in front of the hearth watching Lyall light his pipe - his father's hands shake.

He knows, of course, that Sirius' place in all this is not as simple as a body in a muddied ditch. Looking at his father it was easy to picture him as a soldier: the uniform, the gun, scars he wouldn't show or explain, evidence of his role. Remus isn't even sure what Sirius' role is. He is only there or not there, and Remus has long since given up taking anything Sirius tells him at face value.

In the early hours he stares at the ceiling and counts the seconds until his chest stops heaving with remnants of the dreams, sheets caught tight in his fist. He wonders if this is how his mother felt.

He keeps the floo connection running, leaves his window propped open for any early morning owls he might miss while he sleeps, hurries home through the blackout after work to check the side table by the telephone for any letters stacked for him by his landlady during the day. For the first nine weeks Sirius is gone there's nothing, and then a letter arrives by owl at four in the morning the Wednesday after the visit from Marlene. Remus only catches it because he's feeling his way up the darkened staircase when he hears an insistent tapping on his bedroom window and tries to hurry without falling. As he reaches his room he lights the tip of his wand faintly and pushes the window up as quickly as the sash allows, wary of an over-zealous air warden having him for breaking blackout rules. The small tawny owl that hops through onto the ledge drops a stiff envelope to the floorboards and then disappears back into the night, swooping low across the street.

The envelope is stamped twice by Royal Mail, which implies it's been bounced off at least three delivery points - Muggle and magical - already. The letter inside is blank and it takes him five attempts at reversing the charm to get anything to show up at all, his wand sparking with every tap. When he finally finds one that takes, Remus sits on the edge of the bed, heart hammering against his ribs, staring until the ink bleeds through the parchment and forms the words _watch for me at the house august 5th,_ and then he lets out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding.

\--

The fifth of August is a Tuesday. Remus is at the house in Kentish Town, the pile of mail for Sirius that he's accrued over the weeks in his own flat is bound in string and set neatly on the kitchen table. The sun dapples the hall tiles through the small window in the front door and Remus tries to act as if he isn't waiting for a shadow to block the light.

He tries to read, a little mystery paperback passed on by his landlady, but the words swarm on the pages and there's a nervous energy running through him that makes his skin itch. At three o'clock he puts the kettle on, paces a little. No matter how many times he reminds himself that Sirius is coming home he can't make it stick; what if he's intercepted, what if his letter was read, what if he's been dead for the last two weeks and nobody knows? An image of Sirius curled in a cell somewhere far away cuts into Remus' head unbidden.

The whistle of the kettle reaches its peak, and he busies himself with searching for a box of tea leaves.

It's dark by the time the front door opens, the sound of the lock echoing down the hall. Remus' heart kicks. He finds himself staring from the kitchen doorway, expectant and hesitant. Sirius bustles in, wool coat a sweeping black against the white of the walls. He looks gaunt, but the thin light of the bakerlite hall lamps casts dark shadows and anyway, Remus can't remember the last time Sirius didn't look gaunt. He nears the front door before he even realises he's moving.

Sirius grins, half in and half out of his coat, as Remus pulls him close.

"Missed me?" He says, muffled by Remus' shoulder. He drops his bag and snakes his hands around his waist, fingers cold even through cotton. Remus holds him tighter and says nothing. He presses his face into Sirius' hair and quietens the fear in his chest: Sirius is here and alive and not lying to him, not yet. Not yet.

"Of course I did." He pulls back, takes Sirius' face in his hands. There's a darkness in his eyes that Remus doesn't look too closely at. He smudges a thumb across the chapped softness of Sirius' bottom lip. "Always."

Sirius studies him carefully in the orange glow of the lamps and frowns.

"You've lost weight."

"It's been a long summer." Remus doesn't want to talk about that, either. He doesn't want to be stared at the way Sirius is staring at him, wide eyed and vaguely apologetic, like he's something to be dissected and explained. There are things he wants to ask but asking them means second-guessing any answer Sirius gives, so instead he pushes Sirius' coat off the one shoulder it's hanging from and kisses him. The coat pools at their feet and Remus closes his eyes.

"I missed you too," Sirius whispers against his mouth. He has one hand at the small of Remus' back and the other pushing against his collarbone. Remus stumbles backwards, and in the space between moments Sirius threads their fingers together and pulls him down the hall. Remus lets himself be led. In the dark it's easier to see Sirius as just Sirius, even though his hair is shorter than he usually wears it, and there's a crease between his brows that makes him look older or sadder, Remus can't quite tell which.

"How was your journey?"

"Muggle, for the most part," Sirius says, bringing them to a stop outside his bedroom and turning to face him again. He keeps their hands linked. "Apparated here from the Ministry though. I didn't realise how much of London had been gutted, the underground is in uproar. Not to mention you can hardly walk anywhere after ten it's so bloody dark."

There was a time when the Muggle ways of London had evaded and delighted Sirius in turn, the eccentricities of the world beyond his own something he regarded as quaint or plain backwards. It seems odd now to hear him talking about them like they're nothing. Sometimes it seems like Sirius has assimilated to this better than he has, sliding between Muggle and magic like he's been doing it his whole life, and Remus is still balanced awkwardly on the precipice.

"How long are you home for?"

"Only a few days. I have to be back at the embassy by the tenth." Sirius doesn't say which embassy and Remus doesn't ask. "I'd have longer, but the department is sending me back early after Marlene. All hands on deck, as it were."

Remus doesn't press for news of Marlene because no news is good news except for when it's not, and he isn't even sure Sirius could give him a straightforward answer anyway.

"Do you think it'll be another long stint?" He can already see the next few months stretching out before him, and he wants to tell Sirius how he grieves every parting like a death, but Sirius is leaning back against the doorframe and pulling him closer by the hips and he can't bring himself to say anything.

"Can't we talk about work in the morning?”

Remus thinks of all the things he doesn't know and then thinks of all the things he does and then tries not to think of how one list far surpasses the other. Sirius is porcelain in the half light, staring at him through his lashes and methodically undoing the buttons of Remus' shirt one after the other, and Remus pushes closer to kiss him hard enough to blot out the thrum of uncertainty alive in his own ribcage. He has always been good at giving Sirius what he wants.

"All right," he says, right palm resting at the jut of Sirius' hipbone. "All right."

“You always sound so earnest, it's rather endearing.”

“I thought you wanted to save talking til the morning,” Remus breathes into the space between a kiss and Sirius laughs, honest and bright and god, Remus has missed that sound, the lightness of it. He pulls Sirius closer with one hand curved tight at the back of his neck and the other flush to his ribs beneath his shirt, yields to the deliberate way Sirius fits his thigh into the apex of his own. He's missed this too, the press of another body, the way Sirius looks with his mouth kissed red.

Sirius pulls him stumbling into the room and backs him into the wall, sucking a purple bruise into the curve of his throat, the edge of his jaw. He's dragging Remus' braces down and off his shoulders, sliding cold hands up under his shirt until it slips awkwardly from his shoulders and Remus has to angle himself away from the wall to let it fall to the floor.

"I want you to fuck me," Sirius says, open mouth pressed hot against the skin just below Remus' ear, tongue having drawn a hallowed line across his pulse. He pulls back just enough to shrug out of his own shirt and then takes Remus' face in his hands as if to remind himself that he's solid, corporeal, fingers brushing up and up until they're anchored in his hair, tugging just enough that Remus feels his breath hitch. Sirius moves backwards and takes Remus with him, the path from the door to the bed remembered well enough that neither of them has to pay much attention.

Remus feels the backs of his knees hit the bedstead and lets Sirius push him down and backwards until he's propped on his elbows, watching Sirius step out of his trousers and then reach for him, kneeling across his thighs.

“God, I missed you.” Sirius runs his hands up Remus' ribs, fingertips smoothing across the jagged faultlines carved deep. He bends to kiss him, drops his hands to fumble with the buttons of Remus' fly. Remus lifts his hips as Sirius tugs his trousers down and off, only to reel him back in as soon as he's done. He wraps one arm around Sirius' torso and holds him firm.

“I know.” He presses the words to the hollow of Sirius' neck before leaning to drag his teeth across a nipple, heartbeat holy beneath his tongue. Sirius has his hands in Remus' hair and he pulls him back up so he's looking at him as Remus rolls them over and holds him down, licking a litany of _stay stay stay_ into his mouth _._ He reaches between them to curl his fingers around Sirius' cock and watches his head fall back, throat bared like some kind of offering as Remus slowly strokes the length of him. It says something that Sirius will trust him with his body but not his secrets: it says more about him that he'd rather that than nothing. Looking down at Sirius naked and burning beneath him, Remus wonders dimly if they've always been like this, tangled together in all the wrong ways, and then Sirius surges up to kiss him, all teeth and tongue and something unnameable, and he sinks.

-

The second morning of Sirius' return, Remus wakes first and rolls over to watch the steady rise and fall of Sirius' chest, his eyes tracing the thin line of light that cuts through a gap in the curtains and falls across him like a scar, slicing him neatly in two. Remus feathers his fingertips across it, ghostlike; he's always loved the softness of their mornings, the liminal haze of the bedroom keeping them apart from the rest of the world. He presses his lips to Sirius' shoulder and then slides his legs carefully out from under the quilt.

Remus is half dressed and searching for the least darned pair of socks amongst Sirius' underwear drawer when the mattress creaks. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Sirius yawn and scrub a hand across his face.

“Morning.”

"Where are you off to?" Sirius frowns at him sleepily, eyes half open. He's rolled onto his side and has the quilt rumpled down over his hip in a way that Remus would swear was deliberately teasing if he weren't barely awake. "'Still early, come back to bed."

Remus kneels across him, the mattress dipping beneath his weight. "I'm going to meet Lily, I told you." 

"I suppose you did. Give her my love then," Sirius says, and reaches up to run his fingers through Remus' hair until they rest at the nape of his neck. "I'll be here when you get back."

"I know." Remus smiles crookedly, ignores the cynical voice in his head that doubts, and then leans in to kiss him softly; Sirius' lips are chapped and he tastes of stale cigarettes and the morning. Remus pushes up and off the mattress, afraid that if he lingers he'll never leave the bed again, and pulls a jumper on over his shirt before padding upstairs to the bathroom Sirius shares with the other tenants to shave and comb his hair. His face in the chipped mirror over the sink is angles and hollows and he stares for a moment, at his off-centre nose and the circles beneath his eyes, before purposefully looking away and reaching for the shaving cream. Shaving the muggle way is something Remus has always preferred to the clean cut whisper of magic – it feels like a grounding thing, sometimes, a way of steadying his hand and by association his thoughts. He guides the razor down the line of his jaw and composes in his head a list of things to ask Sirius when he returns later, all the things he wanted to ask last night but couldn't quite form the words for, the what ifs and carefully phrased fears stored safely in the recesses of his mind and rehearsed for so long it almost feels like he's voiced them a thousand times over.

He leaves a cup of tea on the kitchen table, charmed to stay warm, and then within half an hour he's on his way to meet Lily at their usual haunt a little further into the city. The air is crisp and on the cusp of being autumnal. Usually he'd take the bus, but the road ahead is blocked with what looks like bomb debris and he's set off early enough that he doesn't have to rush. By the time he reaches the gates to Regents Park Lily is already there, bent over the pram handlebars to tuck a defiant baby fist back under a pale blanket. She looks up as she hears him approaching and smiles brightly.

“There you are!”

"Morning,” he says, giving Harry a finger-wave around the hood of the pram. These fortnightly meetings, often manifesting as walks in the park so they can speak without fear of being overheard, began first as a way to piece together the information they each picked out from the Ministry through James and Sirius, tying different strands of the same story into one and hoping to find some sort of meaning from it, but as the months played out Remus has found himself looking forward to them just as a means of connection. They are both of them on the fringe of things, it's just that Lily handles everything with more grace than Remus ever could.

She grins at him. "You look chipper."

"Had to walk from the flat, the bus wasn't running." He pushes his hair out of his eyes and squints a little against the sun as they start off down the path. "How are you?"

"Losing patience with Mrs. Langsdale, but otherwise all right." Lily drums her fingers on the pram handle and sighs through her nose. "She keeps on at me to take in a lodger, as if James has _died_ or something, and her bloody cat keeps shredding my rugs when it gets upstairs. Twice now I've almost hexed the sodding thing. How have you been?"

"All right. Work was bad last week, had a couple of casualties over in Whitehall, but now I'm not on call until tomorrow evening." He pauses, words pushing at his teeth. "Sirius is home."

"Ah." Lily glances sideways at him, smiling briefly. Whatever it is that he and Sirius are has never been a secret to her or James, but it goes unspoken for the most part. There's a soft understanding. "How is he?"

"He won't say, not truthfully." Remus shrugs. "He doesn't like talking about work when he's on leave. Not that he could say much."

"James is due home next week. I said I'd meet him at his parents, lest he think I'm spending too much time in the direct line of fire.” She rolls her eyes. Since Harry was born James has been trying to get her to move into the ancestral Potter home in Harrow – there were several almighty rows, some of which Remus was present for, that proved exactly how tempting Lily found this idea, and in the end she agreed to spendng every other weekend with the Potters but remaining for the most part in the flat she and James had in Hampstead.

"How long will he be home this time?"

"A couple of weeks he says. He wrote from Berlin the other day, a terribly cryptic thing I had to work to decipher before I could even read it. Took me at least eight spell variations to make any bloody sense out of it at all." She sighs but there's a niggling worry evident in the lines etching themselves into her face years too soon. A breeze catches the slips of hair that have escaped the neat coil pinned beneath her hat and whips them around her face. "Berlin sounds very unsettled, though, even in the wizarding quarters. I don't envy him. Did Sirius tell you much about Moscow? I wonder if it's as cold as everyone says."

Something falters and Remus almost stops dead in his tracks. The bottom seems to drop out of his stomach, suddenly and without warning; he feels like he's caught Sirius lying to him outright and brazen. It wouldn't be first time. “What?”

Lily frowns, reading the tightening of his jaw. She pulls the pram up to a stop. “Did Sirius not say?”

“No.” Remus glances hurriedly around the park, certain that somehow other walkers will sense the combination of fear and fury he's sure is emanating from him in waves. Lily knows, has known all along, where James has been, which means that either James is allowed to be lenient with his so-called classified information or that he's ignored the safeguarding altogether, which would hurt in itself. That she knows where Sirius has been – that Sirius has told James and James has told Lily and nobody has told him – scrapes at something deep-seated and unpleasant in Remus' gut. “No, he didn't.”

-

Sirius doesn't look at him when he bangs into the house. Remus feels panic spread at the base of his skull, vice-like and buzzing cold: it makes him want to disappear or vomit, or maybe both in quick succession. Ridiculous to think that only that morning he was curled into the sleep warmth of Sirius' bed, savouring the rarity of it.

"You told James where you were."

"I was allowed to tell James," Sirius says, like Remus should know this plain as day. He's dark under the eyes and Remus doesn't want to care.

He files the anger down to something manageable, something blunt. "But not to tell me."

"It might have put you in harm's way." Sirius catches his eye briefly and then resumes checking the pile of post Remus had left on the kitchen table, his hip leant against the sideboard. There's a distance between them, a barrier erected by Sirius abruptly enough that it's hard to fit the two halves of the day together at all. Remus watches his fingers flick past envelope after envelope. "You knew when I'd be home."

"I'm already in harm's way, Sirius, or did you not notice the missing half of the street on your way home?" Remus clamps his back teeth down on the writhing bitterness. "You could have told me where you were, I don't see how that was more bloody dangerous than sending me a cryptic letter. It's hardly as if there are any formal ties to link us. We're not blood, we're not _married_."

He lets that hang in the air between them, the tang of it like metal on his tongue.

"What are you angry about, the fact that I didn't tell you where I was or that I told James?" Sirius has got to the last in the pile of letters and finally looks up, weary but firm. He doesn't want to fight about it and somehow that makes Remus want to keep pressing on the bruise.

"No, you told James, and then he told Lily." He doesn't say: if Lily can know why can't I, or is that a false equivalence to make. He doesn't say: what do you think the difference is.

"If he told Lily he's obviously not as watertight as the department thought he was," Sirius sighs. He's only half sincere. They both know there are few things Sirius doesn't tell James, and they both know that Lily would refuse steadfastly to be kept blind to something so important. Sirius taps the kettle on the sideboard with his wand and then trudges to the table, dropping into one of the rickety chairs to begin opening his mail properly. Remus follows but doesn't sit. Instead he stands across from him, gripping the back of the empty chair hard enough to hurt. Sirius gives him a look. "You didn't seem too concerned with where I'd been last night."

"That's not fair," Remus says, and then, "What did you think I'd do, pass it on to the führer himself?"

"Will you lower your voice?" Sirius hisses, as if the house isn't draped in layers of silencing charms. "You know I can't talk about things, if the minister had his way you wouldn't even know what it is I do."

And what is it that you do, Remus wants to sneer, what is it that you do for months on end when even Dumbledore seems unable to get hold of you, when bombs are gouging craters in the map of London, when my stomach feels coated in fear so acidic I may as well be dissolving. He's only partially convinced by the web of stories Sirius is spinning, the layers of politics and diplomacy and Muggle outreach that seem so concrete at first only to fade into uncertainty when Remus really thinks about them, like sliding tracing paper over the original drawing and finding the lines don't match up quite as you remembered.

"I'd rather know nothing than know just enough to be scared you're not going to come home." This is a lie – Remus knows it and he knows Sirius does too. The grain of the chair is rough beneath his hands.

"I can hold my own against Muggles.”

"And what about everything else, the bombs and the dark wizards on their side? How would you fare if they found out what you're doing? There are stories, Sirius, they'd string you up in fucking pieces." He's angry, probably has been since that night on the astronomy tower; Remus wants this to become a blazing row so he has an excuse to raise his voice, maybe throw something, but Sirius is barely looking at him.

"I promise you I'm careful."

"You can't always be careful." There's a myriad of reasons why Sirius can't understand how deafening the fear of not knowing is. Some grasping part of himself wants to convince Sirius to stay here, in a house as vulnerable to incendiaries as the next, and Remus is glad he's still reasonable enough to know that would be fruitless. There's rubble where half of Camden Station used to be and a pit in his chest that aches when he thinks of how precarious this is. It feels a little like a cosmic joke that Sirius of all people should have a job that can't be talked about as well as a life that can't be talked about, like the universe needed the symmetry to prove some sort of convoluted point. Every time Sirius comes home there's a bit more missing, a little less to him than there was before. It was hard to notice in increments but Remus isn't stupid – the reality of their situation has always been painfully obvious in its difficulty, even with the level of security magic can afford them and then the cover of war, clouded and full of everybody speaking in half truths regardless of who they share their bed with. Briefly over the summer Remus had wondered if there was someone else and Sirius was leading the two of them a merry dance, but he'd found it hard to believe that Sirius would come home and still want to fuck him if there was someone else on offer. Despite that the thought spikes again, and he has to stop himself from asking outright.

"Remus, look at me." Sirius is standing now but he doesn't move any closer.

"It's not enough," Remus says, each word like drawing shrapnel from a wound. "I can't keep doing this. Not knowing where you are or if you're alive, or if you're even doing what you say you're doing. I hate being stuck in a cycle of being scared wherever I am and honestly, Sirius, sometimes I feel like I'm going mad."

“I can't tell you everything.”

“I don't want you to tell me everything, Sirius, I just want you to tell me enough. Christ, is that somehow beyond you?”

Sirius stares at him across the table for a long moment and Remus waits. It's all he ever seems to be doing lately. Here are the same circles they've been turning for god knows how long, the same paths treaded flat, the same anger simmering under Remus' skin. They keep coming back to this, hitting each other at odd angles. Remus has played out this confrontation over and over in his head in the months they've been apart, never quite letting it bleed out when Sirius comes home to him, always too scared of the fallout.

“You're the only thing that brings me back,” Sirius says, and Remus can hardly stand it. He almost chokes on the laugh stuck in his throat. Sirius starts to move towards him, says something else that Remus doesn't hear – he's already in the hall, dragging his coat on. When Sirius catches his shoulder he flinches violently enough to surprise them both.

“Don't, just fucking don't.”

“Where are you going?”

“To get some air.” Remus has stepped back with every step Sirius has taken towards him without even really thinking about it and he knows that if he lets Sirius touch him now he'll never move again. “Don't stay here on my account.”

And then he's out, boots pounding the pavement in time with his rabbit heart, the wind an excuse for the stinging in his eyes. Some small part of him wants Sirius to follow, to maybe apparate to his rooms in Camden and wait for him there, but he hears the door shut firmly behind him and when he glances over his shoulder there's no one: Remus digs his hands deep into his pockets and keeps walking.

-

It's raining when he finds out. It's early January and London is washed out, grey from fog and dust and the smoke curling up from the dollhouse remnants of houses that used to be. There's a new wreckage on the corner of Camden High Street, shop front eviscerated except for the counter, the till standing stark amongst the debris. Remus hardly pauses as he walks past it, shoulders hunched inside his mac; there are so many now it's hard to feel anything but a dull resignation. The war ticks on, dragging its heels: the newspapers for the last week have been plastered with news about the UN declaration, a new spark of a chance catching the imagination of everyone. Even the _Prophet_ ran an article on it, theorising on which officials from the Wizengamot would be send over as representation. Remus in truth had not read the whole story, choosing instead to skim it in passing after stealing the copy the local owlery had in its reception. He lets himself into his flat, shouldering the door open harder than necessary in a bid to get out of the rain. His hair sticks to his forehead and his socks are sodden through his shoes.

He knows something is wrong as he gets halfway up the stairs; the air hangs heavy with old magic, cracking like static where his hand touches the banister. When he reaches the top the landing seems to stretch out in front of him and he freezes, slides his wand down out of his sleeve until his fist is curled around it. Someone is in his room. He presses himself into the wall, careful to avoid the creaking boards, the wallpaper smooth against his palm as he sidles towards his door. Fear trails cold fingers up the steps of his spine.

Rather than fumble for his keys Remus touches his wand to the lock, and then twists the knob. The door opens inwards and he steps forward, _expelliarmus_ held between his teeth just in case, heart hollow in his throat.

"I have to say, Mr Lupin, this is somewhat of a surprise." Dumbledore is stood by the window, robes sweeping the floor. He looks entirely too ornate to be in this room with its bare boards and peeling wallpaper, paint flaking off the windowsill like snow. He turns as Remus enters and smiles. It doesn't quite reach his eyes. "Although not altogether unexpected, when one takes stock."

Remus is confused and it must show, because Dumbledore gestures with his hand as if to clear the air and says, "I hope you don't mind the additional protection wards. "

"Can I ask why you're here," Remus asks, apprehensive. Dumbledore gives him a curious look over the top of his spectacles, and then folds his hands.

"He didn't tell you." Dumbledore is watching him too closely and Remus wants to ask him to either get on with it or leave, but somehow he doesn't think that would win him any favours. "How curious."

"I'm not sure I understand."

"Were you aware, Lupin, that this is the address listed in Sirius Black's file?"

"No." A chasm is opening in his torso: he can feel it, sickening and dark. "What does that mean?"

"His home elsewhere in London is known to some, so at first the Order believed this to be a safe house, a cover on his forms should he be intercepted."

But _you_ didn't, Remus wants to say, of course you didn't, you know this is mine. Dumbledore is still watching his every move and he wants more than anything to be invisible, alone with his twisting fear; there's a tremor in his hands that doesn't go away even though he tightens his grip on his wand. Sirius would only put Remus' address down if there was a chance the department would need to contact someone in place of next of kin, which of course he isn't and never will be, and wouldn't seek him out without prompting. A small lie to ensure the truth reached who it needed to.

"I don't understand," Remus says, even though he does, achingly.

Dumbledore holds a stiff envelope in his hands and Remus backs into his bedroom chair, blood buzzing in his temples. He feels very far away all of a sudden, expanding and retracting within the space of his own head.

"Remus, this is most regretful, I -"

"No." Remus can't look at him, not yet, maybe not ever again. "Please stop."

He doesn't want to listen to whatever else Dumbledore has to say to him, dread-heavy and laced with false remorse. The room goes quiet and he can hear nothing but the pattering of rain on the window and the stilted rasp of his own breathing. There's something sharp blossoming in the space beneath his breast bone, dark and bloody. Remus wonders if this is what drowning in your own body feels like. He looks at the envelope caught between Dumbledore's bony fingers and knows he won't read it, unsure if he even has the capacity to do so if he tried.

"Your situation was delicate, I am certain he wanted you to be told in the proper way."

Delicate isn't a word Remus would ever ascribe to Sirius or anything to do with him, knife-edged as he is. Delicate in how he moved, perhaps, delicate in how he kissed in the sleep slow haze of morning. Sirius has always been a force of his own, a reckoning; he is stubborn and precise and blundering, trying desperately to be someone who wants to be good. The thought comes dully into his head, then, that Sirius will be none of those things again; it's not a sharp realisation but simply a heavy one. Remus wants to scream until his throat is raw. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Dumbledore hesitate, weighing the situation as if there's anything else he could possibly say. Remus doesn't look at him again. Instead he watches the rain hit the window pane, streaks of white-grey blurring the view of the street outside and collecting along the frame.

"I think," he says, "I'd like it if you left now." The words sound crackling, like he's hearing himself through a badly tuned wireless. Remus can feel Dumbledore watching him and he wants more than anything to grab the old man by his robes and slam him into the wall, ask him how dare he do this, how dare he be the one to deliver the news, how dare he have the fucking gall.

Remus pulls his legs up onto the chair, tight to his chest. His clothes are still damp from the walk home but he presses his forehead to his knees anyway, cradled in the small darkness and the smell of rain. He thinks of Sirius' hands twined into his own, the lines of his collarbone jutting sharply in late night shadow, the ring of his laugh around the dormitory or their bedroom or the kitchen, echoing and echoing. He doesn't know how long he sits like that, eyes shut tight. At some point the rain eases, trickling off at first and then stopping entirely. His skin is pulled taut, too thin to hold him together, and there under everything, buried beneath the loss and hurt and his traitorous fucking heart is a seed of relief that hurts when he breathes.

He stays there until it gets dark and then he forces himself to stand, joints stiff and cold. He walks over to the nightstand and take up the envelope Dumbledore has left there, turning it over in his hands. He doesn't open it. The bloody wax and the memory of Dumbledore's fingers on the parchment told him everything, and he doesn't need to see the words written down to know what has been drumming hard in his chest since he opened his front door. He sits cross-legged in front of the fireplace and slides it carefully into the coals, and then he lights it with magic and watches it burn black, the flames devouring it piece by piece. This is what an ending is: a rain streaked window, a pile of snowflake embers. A slow unwinding.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

>  **Notes:** I decided on a wartime setting partly because I feel like r/s works well with the extra conflict surrounding them, but also partly because this particular war is a time period I'm generally quite interested in and the research into the British intelligence and espionage turned up some WILD stories of double agents. As far as research goes, I relied heavily on the BBC History People's War online archive, which is a compilation of first hand accounts of wartime experiences in a huge variety of areas. I also read several chapters of 'The Guy Liddel Diaries: MI5's Director of Counter Espionage in World War II, vol.1' to get a feel for how the intelligence service worked during the war. It was interesting to work out how the wizarding world would fit into that, and how close the Ministry would work with the Muggle government during the war effort.  
>  Also useful was bombsight.org, which provided a general map of London with all major bombing sites pinpointed (invaluable! morbid!) and Sarah Waters' _The Night Watch_  
> .  
>  Last, but definitely not least, I'd like to thank H, who let me bounce ideas off her to ensure maximum angst.  
> 


End file.
